


Genius Loci

by crfaddis



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Planet, Danger, Gen, Human Anatomy, Ice, Mind Meld, Rescue Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1977-05-01
Updated: 1977-05-01
Packaged: 2020-09-24 13:14:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20359087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crfaddis/pseuds/crfaddis
Summary: McCoy is lost; Kirk and Spock search for him, but are beginning to think the dangers on this world aren't just environmental.





	Genius Loci

**Author's Note:**

> **Publication Notes:**  
First appeared in the Star Trek fanzine “  
[ The Other Side of Paradise 2 ](https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Other_Side_of_Paradise)  
” accompanied by artwork by   
[ Signe Landon ](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Signe_Landon)  
.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/156119161@N07/29935706978/in/album-72157696837217924/)

_ This must be sorcery _, Leonard McCoy thought blissfully. He plunged down the mossy path, paying no attention to the sheer drop at his left onto rocks and swirling currents of the river far below. He was singing, and his soul was bursting with music that poured out through his throat, his nose, his eyes, his fingertips - a vivid aurora of ecstatic musical color that streamed around him like some visible Van Allen belt. He was oblivious to it, to anything but the tilting green trail into the gorge that would bring him to the towering symphony that beckoned from the base of the thundering waterfalls.

_ Bach _ , he thought, and his hurrying feet all but waltzed along the sliver of ledge as his memory played the full orchestration to the rapturous _ Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring _. The song itself seemed to carry him, vibrating inside his skull with irresistible power. He sang the words from memory as though he had known them, each one special, from the day of his conception.

Half of the canyon's depth fled behind him, but when he reached the song's conclusion, he had to stop and cling to a sturdy overhang, feeling joyously wilted for long moments as he panted and grasped for a straw of sobriety.

Almost immediately, the compulsion reclaimed him. _ Music, think, oh think of music _. Straightening, McCoy peered into the mists from the falls that were rising now to touch his face, and he laughed.

_ Wagner, Wagner! Yes, the Leibestod. Tristam and Isolde. _

It rose within him and he thrilled to it, let go of the rock and set about to conquer the remainder of the trail, nearly running now with delirious anticipation, to the bottom of the switchback trail, across the narrow strip of rock and sand and detritus to the very edge of the pool at the foot of the crushing stream of tumbling water. The music surged toward its climax, and his body arched, trembling helplessly, possessed, oblivious to all but the sounds ravishing his mind, and the sweeping symphony of mesmerizing water, the foaming swirls between the boiling mists where the great falls pounded. It filled him with an agony of beauty, all of the intoxication of all of the magnificent aural works of art that he had ever experienced, suddenly concentrated into a single emotion. He reached beyond the confines of his body, blending with the mists, with the foam, with the swirls, with the green-white sheets of flying water, with the thunder that filled the chasm and his soul, as _ Liebestod _ built to an unendurable crescendo that must surely scatter his atoms to the far edges of the galaxy, just as the sun-dazzled droplets spattered outward from the base of the falls.

_ Sorcery _, he exalted, and stepped into the cold, bright foam. Distantly, a voice - his voice? - was shrieking in sheer terror, but the music rose again and drowned it out... and McCoy melded with the roaring current.

* * *

"Damn me and damn the Orions," Kirk growled as he scanned the primitive landscape of Demphios IV. Spread out behind him, the fern birches made a tropical wilderness. Before him yawned a misty gorge, cut by the same river that had drawn the damaged Enterprise to this out-of-the-way planet. "And damn McCoy," Kirk added, worry tempering his angry voice. "Spock, isn't there _ some _ way we can cut through this blasted interference and get a sensor scan down there? McCoy knew the rendezvous time, he'd have been back if he could have."

The Vulcan First Officer's lean face was dimmed by the gloom of the settling day, but Kirk caught the flicker of frustration in it.

"The electromagnetic interference which the canyon apparently generates has successfully thwarted every effort by our instruments to penetrate it," Spock reported.

"Any luck beaming into it?"

"Negative. We are endeavoring, in the only manner left to us, to have a 'look.' Mister Sulu, Mr. Develle, and Ms. Wahid are experienced climbers, as I am. If we can negotiate the trail to the bottom of the canyon without incident, we should be able to search the canyon floor and return here to the rim within 12.4 hours."

"If McCoy isn't hurt," Kirk said, and brushed an annoying insect out of his hair. "Blast it all, he said he didn't want a shore leave. If I hadn't heckled him into it, he wouldn't be in trouble now."

"We do not know that the doctor is in trouble," Spock reminded.

"No," Kirk said, and stared into the dusk-swallowed gorge. It was a long, steep way down, a kilometer at least. The animal trail where McCoy's bootprints had been found was a thread of winding ledges that disappeared into the fog half way down. It would not have been too difficult to traverse during daylight, but at night…

"Why the hell would Bones go down there?" he muttered, then he turned back to the others. Behind Spock, Sulu, Wahid and Develle were busy rewinding lengths of climbline beamed down from the ship, bundling the loops into their preferred arrangements. Kirk was grateful that each of them had volunteered for the search; he would have loathed having to order anyone into the canyon at night. He wrung his hands unconsciously.

"Captain," Spock said, and Kirk glanced at him. "Except for the difficulties of the climb itself, there should be little danger to either the search team or to Dr. McCoy. Sensors reported no sentient lifeforms on Demphios. Indeed, seventy-two percent of the crew have visited the surface during our repairs, either on duty or on shore leave, and no one has reported any fauna or flora deadly to humanoids."

"That would be encouraging if we had any idea what's down _ there _," Kirk said. He flipped open his communicator and had Uhura patch him through to Scott, who was out on the hull overseeing repairs to the damage inflicted by a kamikaze Orion raider.

A sharp crackle of static was followed by a "Scott here. Go ahead, sir."

"How's it going, Scotty?"

"We're doin' right good; sir. All of the water storage compartments are refilled now, and Internal Maintenance reports that the river water is verra clean and wilna require extensive filtration to be usable. Repairs on the outer hull are comin' along, but I dinna think Number four Shield will ever be the same. We'll need t' get a replacement at Starbase, sir."

"Any change in your completion time?"

"The same, sir. Twenty-two hours, at least."

"Scotty, you're a magician. I'm going to accompany the search team for Dr. McCoy, along with Spock, so I'm putting you in command for a while."

"Aye, sir."  
"If we aren't at the beam-up point by the time you've finished repairs, leave orbit and get back to Starbase 12. With more pirates in the area, we don't want another battle, just now. You can come back for us here after you've completed repairs at Starbase, if you have to."  
"Verra well, Captain. Good luck findin' the doctor. Scott out."

As Kirk closed his radio, a hand touched his arm, its warmth penetrating the fabric of his uniform. He looked up at Spock, and a firefly blazed a meteoric trail across Spock's face, illuminating it for almost a second. The eyes were huge, pupils dilated and catlike in the dusk. Whatever human expression might ever find its way there, it would never happen in those night eyes. 

"Captain, it is folly for you to go."

"No doubt," Kirk said. He knelt to retrieve his climbing harness. "But I am going."

* * *

Two of Demphios' three moons made a standing broad jump across the zenith as the planet's short, seven-hour equatorial night swallowed the mist-choked gorge. The descent was treacherous - made so by the impenetrable darkness of night and the dampness of the mist, which coated everything with a film of slick water. Spock, his night vision superior to the humans', took the lead down the trail, aiming his phaserlight so that its beam lit the ledge optimally. Even with the powerful lamp, the climb was surrealistic, a bizarre nightmare of careful paces in the eddies of rising mists.

Fastened together at their waists, the climbers eased their way down the cliff, backs pressed nervously to the dripping stone wall, toes probing ahead hesitantly where the ledge narrowed, fearful of entrusting full weight to any single patch of silt or slab of stone. The fog made a shifting curtain of white in the harsh lights, sometimes insubstantial, sometimes deceptively solid-seeming. Bits of alien plant forms jutting from crevices in the stone became eerie, whitewashed sculptures in the glare of the lamps. There was, oddly, little breeze, but the chill dampness settled in their hair, trickling down their scalps to join the rivulets of sweat under their uniforms.

"Captain."

The string of panting bodies halted, and Kirk unclipped his safety line long enough to scutter past Sulu and join Spock. He knelt beside Spock carefully in the slippery clay that had accumulated on the ledge, and looked where Spock had pointed his light. The boot print was smudged, and the impression of the heel was faint.  
"He was hurrying," Spock said.

"Hurrying," Kirk mouthed. "Hurrying from what?"

But Spock straightened, alert as though listening for something.

"What is it?"

"Listen."

A breath of wind spun the fog into tight curls around the lamps, and below, around the jutting cliff, the faint thunder of the waterfall rose, but that was all. Kirk shook his head.

"I don't hear anything."

Spock's backlit profile frowned slightly. "Spock, what was it?"

"I didn't hear anything either," Sulu offered.

Spock rose. "Possibly it was merely the wind. I thought I heard a set of rhythmic sounds, but it was too brief to analyze."

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/156119161@N07/40639065240/in/album-72157696837217924/)

"All right, everyone keep your eyes and ears open for anything unusual. Let's get moving. And be careful, it's getting more slippery."

The trail rounded a prominence and angled back into a narrow side canyon where the pounding of the water below was an echoing boom, and the billowing mists thinned. Glancing momentarily overhead, Kirk could see the broad sweep of stars in the Perseus belt, a unique angle on the "Milky Way." He scanned the sky for a moving point of light that would be the orbiting Enterprise.

The next thing he knew, a violent tug at his waist yanked the air out of him, and his left foot stepped into air. Crashing into the vertical rock face, he clawed for a handhold, lacerating skin and fabric as a terrible weight below dragged at him. He stopped slipping, dangling at the end of his lifeline, and scrabbled at the stone, sending loose chunks flying. Panic clutched him in the darkness.

"Jim, stay still!" a voice ordered. "We have you. Do not struggle."

Some of the voice's authority got through the panic, and Kirk wrapped his hands around his lifeline as it rasped his cheek, slinging to it madly, trying to think; trying to find himself. His chest and throat were pounding, his ears roared with currents of surging blood, and he choked on his frantic gasps. A sudden glare from the phaser lights above blinded him. He squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed painfully. The drag at his middle was stretching him out as on a rack, straining his spine.

"Sulu?" a female voice called. "Sulu?"

"I see him," Spock was saying from somewhere above.

"He is below the Captain."

"Spock!" Kirk rasped.

"Do not move, Captain. We can draw you up in a moment. Do not move."

Kirk swallowed again to stifle his gasps, and clung to the line, feeling the wrenching bruise his muscles under Sulu's weight. He could feel every tiny weaving in the nylon strands in his hands, and he tried to ignore the sick, prickling fear that was rooted in his stomach and plunged down through the soles of his dangling feet.

The line lurched upward, hauling him toward the valhalla of the ledge, barely a meter above his reach. He dared to open his eyes again, but he could see nothing of the rough vertical wall that scraped past him. He let go of the line with one hand as he banged into the cliff and covered his face with the freed arm, oblivious to any sensation but the spine-snapping drag beneath him. Then hands were tugging at his shoulders, and rolled him up onto the blessed solidity of the muddy trail. Someone unsnapped the agony from his belt and admonished him to lie still, which he did gratefully. 

It might have been a moment or an hour, but someone was hauling him up to set his back against the cold cliff wall, and began to handle his limbs as though checking for fractures. He opened his eyes to see Spock next to him, carefully rolling up a tattered gold sleeve on an arm that Kirk couldn't feel. The skin beneath was scraped and the fabric was sticky with blood.

"I can't feel it," Kirk managed. "Is it broken?"

"I think not, but the cuts may be serious," Spock said, and finished stripping the sleeve away, examining the cuts. "You are fortunate, the damage is superficial."

"What happened?"

"Apparently, Sulu lost his footing, and as your own footing was insecure, he pulled you over the ledge with him."

"Is he hurt?"

"Uncertain. He struck his head and was dazed. I doubt that he is in a condition to continue the descent."

Kirk turned and could see Wahid and Develle with Sulu, who was also sitting up and who responded to Kirk's worried look with a weak apologetic grin.

"Sulu, how do you feel?"

"A bit shaky, sir."

"All right, relax. Mr. Develle, do you think you can get back up to the rim by yourself if you wait until daylight?"

"Yes, sir, I think so."

"Sulu, do you feel well enough to wait until morning before seeing a medic?"

"I'm all right, Captain," he said gamely.

"Like hell you are. Ms. Wahid, I want you to stay with him, I don't think he should be left here himself. Develle, as soon as you feel it's light enough to climb, get back up to the rim and get help, take him back to the ship."

"Aye, Aye, sir."

"Captain," Spock interrupted, "are you certain that you can continue, yourself? You were trembling when I pulled you onto the ledge."

"We're going on down," Kirk said stubbornly. To that, Spock had no rejoinder.

As soon as Kirk's legs felt steady, he and Spock set off down the treacherous trail again. The arm that had been numb was beginning to sting, helping Kirk to keep his mind on the seriousness of the business at hand. They moved with utmost caution.

The ledge ended abruptly, and they had to scramble hands and knees down a steep incline of sandstone, clay and detritus to get to the next tier of the path, which was comfortably broad. It led ever downwards, sometimes narrowing to a sliver, sometimes turning back on itself. And always, McCoy's hurrying boot prints led ahead of them, over the obstacles, around the switchbacks, down the canted shelves, in and out of cervices that textured the face of the cliff. The blaze from the others' phaser lights above shrank, then winked out entirely as the trail took yet another twist around a huge outcropping and plummeted in heart-stopping inclines towards the head of the gorge and the waterfall. Gradually, the features of the black pit into which they descended began to resolve around them again as the eastern sky took on a murky pink.

Spock skidded in the wet moss for the third time, and Kirk automatically braced himself to take the shock of Spock's weight, if necessary, but the agile Vulcan righted himself and stopped, breathless, to rest on a green-carpeted shelf. Kirk collapsed next to him, too winded to speak. It seemed as interminable century that they had been walking, climbing, sliding, inching downward over the rocks. Kirk's knees quivered with fatigue. He sat and massaged them with his good arm, the scraped one having stiffened somewhat over the hours. 

Spock reached over and switched off Kirk's phaser light, and Kirk realized that except for at the base of the falls, the mist had dissolved.

"Where'd the fog go?" he said, when he could find his voice.

"It began to recede about thirty minutes ago."

"I only just noticed. How long have we been climbing?" 

"Six hours, seventeen minutes."

"Longer than we expected." 

"Considerably longer."

"It'll take longer to climb out, too."

But Spock had raised his head and seemed to listen to... something.

"What is it?"

Both of Spock's eyebrows rose, and he gazed back at Kirk with distinct puzzlement. 

"It is, beyond doubt, Smetana's composition, _ Die Moldau _."

"The what?"

"An orchestra playing a symphonic composition. I can hear it. Listen."

Kirk listened. Yes, there _ was _ something, a vague rhythmic something just at the fringes of his hearing.

"Where's it coming from?"

"I believe that it is coming from within the gorge." 

"Music?"

"Music. Terran music, in fact."

Kirk leaned over carefully so that he could see down into a broad area of the gorge, which was less than a hundred meters below them now. There was a roiling pool at the foot of the falls, and below that started rapids. On either side of the river were banks of sand and rock and clumps of vegetation. Across the river was a grove of fern birches backed by the vertical cliff. Nowhere was there a sign of sentient life or culture.

"Music," Kirk said again, and pulled himself back, shaking his head. "If we've both gone mad, at least we'll have each other for company."

Spock gave him a look of mild distaste, then stood up smoothly.

"If we are to locate the doctor and return to the rim in our allotted time, we must not tarry here," he said, and helped Kirk up.

By the time they reached the river bank, Demphios' young white sun had hoisted itself over the horizon and was splashing the lower end of the canyon with light. Kirk sank down on a boulder by the pool, stretching his aching legs gratefully while Spock paced the edge of the riverbank looking for signs of McCoy. They both heard snatches of the music now, only occasionally but with an odd clarity. It didn't seem to have a source, it was simply there sometimes, and not there others. Spock had explained that it could possibly be a low level feedback from their own minds caused by whatever electromagnetic disruption occurred naturally in the gorge. Kirk admitted that he did recognize the piece- of music, McCoy was fond of it and often played his tape of it in the rec rooms, but it made Kirk nervous, nonetheless - as though he were being watched.

"Captain, over here."

McCoy's boot prints walked into the water. Kirk gazed at the seething pool bleakly. It swirled with whirlpools and foam, pouring out at its wide lower end in a tremendous current that birthed a new level of the swift river.

"He could have gone behind the falls," Kirk suggested, half-yelling to be heard over the roar.

"Impossible," Spock shouted back. "I have already looked behind the falls from that promontory there. There are no caves or ledges by which a man could pass."

Kirk glanced up into the veil of flying water and caught a flicker of dark flotsam sailing down in the shower, borne over the edge. He followed it with his eyes, long seconds until it struck the pool and went under. For longer seconds, it did not reappear, and when it did, he saw that it was a huge, sodden trunk of fern birch. The current grabbed it and dragged it toward the cataracts as though it were a leaf-boat. It crashed into one of the worn boulders in midstream, sending splinters flying, then bobbed on wildly downstream, disappearing into the waves.

"If Bones went into there," Kirk said grimly, "he's dead."

"Not necessarily," Spock said. He pointed to the copse of trees on the other bank. "It is possible that he may have been swept to the other shore."

"Why would he go into the water in the first place?" 

"I doubt that he would have done so voluntarily."

But the evidence of McCoy's boot prints, alone and obviously deliberately paced in the wet sand, said otherwise.

Kirk's throat tightened. _ If I hadn't teased him into going planetside for shore leave, he'd never have come here... _

"Are you sure he isn't on this bank, farther downstream?"

"Positive. The river cuts into the face of the cliff around the bend approximately two hundred thirty meters downriver."

The grove across the water seemed deceptively close - Kirk could have lobbed a stone into it. He put his hands to his mouth to shout.

"McCoy!" he yelled over the roar. "Bones, are you there?" 

He was answered by another snippet of music, but that was all. 

"We'll have to cross and take a look in case he's there, but hurt or unconscious," Kirk decided, and squared his shoulders, "we have to try."

Spock nodded and walked along the bank to where a beached log was rocking in the gentle swells of a backwater. Kirk followed.

"It may be possible to cross if we managed to lodge this log in those boulders," Spock said, pointing to outcroppings in a narrow stretch of current. If they could reach those rocks, there were other rocks over which they might make a way to the other shore.

An hour's hard work resulted in a precarious success, with the log in place, but not as securely as would have been desirable. Its surface had long been stripped of its bark, besides, and the wet, smooth cambium was practically frictionless. The two men took only a few minutes to rest, then prepared themselves to attempt a crossing. Tying their climblines to each other, they straddled the huge tree as it heaved in the surging water. Kirk, at the front, pulled himself along, looking only at the flat-topped rock toward which he moved. When he looked at the sweeping water just under his feet, it made him dizzy. There was too much noise to hear Spock, but he could feel him moving behind him, inching his way forward and riding the log as though it were an unbroken mustang. Spray splashed up onto Kirk's cheek and stung it with cold. He managed to slide safely around a butt of splintered branch, and crawled out onto the flat rock, skidding a little in the slick scum.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/156119161@N07/41723953324/in/album-72157696837217924/)

He was just turning around to reach a hand to Spock when he saw the Vulcan's knee skid off the edge of the rock. Flailing, Spock went over backwards into the current. Kirk lunged for a better handhold, but the line at his waist jerked him helplessly around the boulder, and he was dragged in.

_ Cold _ drove into him with numbing spikes, and he tumbled, unable to find where up was. He had at least half a lungful of air that he'd grabbed as he was pulled under. The water was full of grit, like an under-river sandstorm, and he couldn't see to get a bearing. He pushed at the current with arms and legs, trying to stabilize himself, and a hand grazed his back. He twisted and felt around desperately, closed on the hand and on Spock.

A sudden thud knocked the air out of him as he crashed into a rock. Gritty water poured into his nose and throat and he choked and struggled. From somewhere, arms were grabbing at him, the air was made of water, there was nowhere to go, to go, to go. The current swept them downwards, tumbling like chips of stone, clinging together in the insane sand-water typhoon and losing to it. The river closed its veil over their heads and carried them down to darkness.

* * *

He retched for a long time before he remembered that he was alive and could think. It was dark, and the taste of river was in his mouth, and he was heavier than he thought he should be - _hi-grav, can't move arms... transported to Jupiter_? - and there was sand under his tongue. He spit it out, and after a moment, managed to roll over. He rolled onto something soggy that gave under his weight, something cold, a body. _Spock_.

There was illumination from somewhere, but it was too dim to make out more than a dark form on a lighter ground. Sloshing water was very close, and as Kirk pushed up, he realized that his legs had been lying in it, but he had little sensation in them, they were numb with cold. He felt numb everywhere.

It was an effort to move. It was especially an effort to think. 

_ Spock _. 

Weakly, he shook the sodden form, but it was limp. That sent a galvanizing surge of adrenalin through Kirk's veins, and his fear lent him strength. He got his hands under Spock and turned him over. _ Vulcan, won't find a pulse, listen for heartbeat _ . It was faint, but steady. _ Breathing _? Barely. Kirk strained and flipped Spock onto his face again, then got behind him and leaned with both hands on his upper back. No response. He leaned again, putting his weight into it. Still nothing.

Frantic now, but hampered by exhaustion, he rolled Spock over again, found the mouth, opened it, and forced a lungful of breath down the Vulcan's throat. When he pressed down on Spock's stomach, this time it brought a response of harsh choking. Kirk breathed more air into Spock's lungs, but the choking was becoming coughing, and then water began to come up. The spasms shook the Vulcan helplessly, and Kirk clung to him, supporting Spock's head as best he could.

"'S'okay," he assured, knowing that Spock would be all right now. For the first time, he looked around to try to determine where they were: in a tunnel, there was rock all around. No, not a tunnel, a cave. The river lapped at their feet. They were lying on a sticky bank of silt, mostly clay. The light; wherever it was coming from, was more feeble than moonlight, allowing no perception of detail. He heard, rather than saw, the water. He still could not feel it. His extremities had a flushed, hot feeling to them that was like the stinging sensation of snow rubbed on bare skin.

"Jim?"

"Right here. You better?" 

"Apparently."

"I think the river swept us into some kind of underwater air pocket."

"Most fortunate."

"Not if we can't get out." 

"True."

"You warm enough?" 

"Marginally. Are you?"

"Frozen. My hands and feet are numb. Wish I'd worn a thermal uniform."

Spock slid over beside him and appropriated one of Kirk's hands, chafing it methodically.

"I can compensate metabolically for the reduced temperature," Spock explained, "But you cannot."

Kirk endured the attention, using the time to consider their problem.

"I don't suppose we'd have any more luck using our communicators in here than we did outside," he said. "See if you can get through with yours, anyway."

"I seem to have lost my equipment in the water. Do you have yours?"

"No, I left my things in the cairn on the shore, as you suggested, remember?"

"Indeed, I had forgotten. The cold seems to be affecting my reasoning capacity, in spite of my metabolic compensation."

"I'm not thinking well, either. It must be near freezing in here."

"Highly probable. The temperature of the water, which is runoff from mountain snow, is a fraction of a point above freezing, Celsius. Nonetheless, we may have to attempt to swim out of here the same way we entered," Spock said. "If this is indeed an air pocket, we shall eventually consume our oxygen supply." 

"We'll swim if we have to, but we'd better rest a while yet. Do you have any idea how much time has passed?"

"Negative. I lost track of time while I was unconscious."

"We had a few extra hours to search the canyon before we had to start back, maybe we can get out of here and make it to the rim on time.

Spock finished chafing life into Kirk's feet, and eased himself back in the mud, resting on his elbows. 

"You have given up on Doctor McCoy, then?" Spock asked gently.

Kirk slumped, and didn't answer for a moment.

"You know as well as I do, if Bones walked - or fell - into the river, how slim his chances were." 

Spock's silence was desolate agreement.

After a time, the Vulcan sat up, then stood to examine the ceiling of the cave, which just grazed his head.

"Exquisite," he commented.

Kirk stumbled up to join him, and peered closely at the stone. It was flecked with millions of points of green light, a veritable galaxy in a hand's span of stone.

"What are they?"

"I believe they are a form of chemosynthetic lichen, Captain. The bioluminescence is probably a by-product of their life process."

"They make a beautiful display."

"A most fortuitous one, for us. I believe that we should be able to negotiate our way around the cavern by their light."

Kirk made some neutral response and sat down again, pulling away from Spock a little. He felt strange, as though some invisible lamprey had attached itself to his bloodstream and was draining his energy. He knew he was in excellent physical condition, and he had been cold before; it wasn't that. He should be feeling considerably stronger than he was. No, it was some 'drain' in the place itself, or maybe he was hallucinating. This close little hole did have a surreal feeling to it, as though he expected it to dissolve around him at any moment. He felt as though he were an alien bacterium lodged in the appendix of some titanic sleeping creature.

"Are you in distress, sir?" Spock asked.

Kirk realized that the shivering he had been trying to muffle had betrayed him.

"Damn it, I should know by now that I can't hide anything from those ears of yours," Kirk snapped, and then it struck, him how much he had sounded like Bones. A wave of depression rose in him.

And then it started. Again! What had been indistinguishable echoes from the recesses of the cavity were coalescing into almost whispered passages from a lilting chant. The voices rose to an ethereal crescendo, then faded again. Only echoes of the lapping water remained.

Kirk felt the hairs on his arms bristle.

"That," Spock said solemnly, "was a prayer-chant from the _ Lanapse _ of the Ten Tribes of Capella IV."

"Where could it be coming from?"

"Unknown. It does not seem to be directional. Captain, I have noticed that there has been a subtle drain on my psionic energies since we entered the canyon proper. It may, indeed, be a natural phenomenon, as I mentioned earlier. However, it could equally well be the deliberate effort of a sentient mind to communicate with us."

"What makes you think that?"

"The _ Lanapse _ of the Ten Tribes is a charm invoked when facing a task of utmost difficulty. I do not believe that I am distorting fact when I say that we are facing such a task."

"_ Someone _ may be trying to encourage us, you mean. All right, I think we ought to take a close look around our 'air pocket,' Mr. Spock. There may be another way out of here."

* * *

The 'air pocket' was a minor room in a vast labyrinth of caverns. No sooner had Spock and Kirk crawled out of the muddy cavity and into the next when a chill air current boxed their ears, a sure sign of some connection to the surface somewhere. They headed up a long, rough tunnel that was calf-deep in muddy slush, with the biting wind in their faces. So long as they walked into the wind, they must eventually find the access to the outside. They hoped.

The chamber took an upward slant, leaving the mud behind, but a thin veneer of ice coated everything, and they had to cling to stalagmites to make progress, or get down on their knees to crawl on the gelid floor. Everywhere, the vague illumination seemed to seep out of the stone itself. The bioluminescence brightened as they walked, always climbing now, through the convoluted maze of passages and open rooms. But the breeze came only from a single passage at a time, and on it, with increasing persistence, floated the haunting chants of the _ Lanapse _.

They were slithering through a tight tunnel, belly-to-floor, when Kirk, at the fore, stopped suddenly.

"Is something wrong?" Spock's muffled voice asked from behind.

But Kirk didn't answer. He peered into the next room through which they must pass and his stomach lurched. They were trapped. The room was an iron maiden of ice, a thicket of gleaming spikes of ice that hung from the high ceiling and festooned the entire basin of floor like razor edged sharks' teeth. To cross it was death. The slightest slip... and every step would pierce their feet.

"We can't go through," he whispered. "What did you say?"

"Slide backwards and let me out," Kirk managed. "You'd better look yourself."

Spock complied, and when Kirk skittered back into the chamber they had just left, he was too disheartened to explain. He just gestured at the passage, letting Spock climb in to see.

Kirk clenched his numbed hands and drew them to his mouth to breathe on and warm them a little. He hunched into a tight ball and shivered. That damned music echoed around the cave, again. Maybe the place was really a graveyard, and haunted. Or maybe Earth's religions had it wrong about hell - it was ice, not fire. _ My mind is starting to slip. And if I slip, the slightest slip, and every slip could be the last _... 

He looked up as Spock scrambled out of the passage and crouched beside him, but whatever Spock was thinking, his face was unreadable.

"If only we had a phaser," Kirk said wearily, "We could melt our way through in a minute."

"We shall have to attempt it without phasers."

"Maybe we could find our way back to the river again, and try to swim out, like we were going to do in the first place?" 

Spock shook his head.

"We do not have the strength for it," he said, but Kirk could read between the words: _ You do not have the strength for it _. And it was true. Kirk straightened slowly and clamped down on the surge of terror. All right, they would have to go forward. There must be some way to get through.

"We'll need to do something more than just being careful," he said. "Maybe if we carried some rocks, we could use them like hammers to break off the points of the icicles as we go. We've got to keep from getting too cut up, or we aren't going to be able to climb out of the canyon even if we get out into it."

He gathered himself to rise, but Spock gestured for him to stay.

"Rest." Spock cautioned. "I shall find suitable stones to use."

Armed with hammerstones, they began to pick their precarious way down the frozen cascades of ice into the jaws of the deathtrap. The basin of the room was thirty meters from end to end, with another steep cascade of frozen tiers leading out. The wind whipped in a whirlpool in the confines of stone and ice, and its low howl was the only sound other than the men's gasps and the eerie, distant whispers of the _ Lanapse _. Spock led the way down, with Kirk securely linked to him by the climbline. They would slide a few meters, then skid to a stop, then ease down another meter or two. Near the lowest terrace, the stalagmites of ice began, tiny nubs and needles at the fringes, growing the jagged columns near the center of the room. Many were as tall or taller than a man, but the spikes were butted closely together, like a bristle of quartz crystals, and many were at waist level or lower - death by impalement patiently awaiting a hapless victim.

"I have never seen ice set in formations such as these," Spock said. He kicked at the first needles by his feet, where he must make his next slide downwards.

"Are you saying that this isn't natural?" Kirk panted. _ Talk. Keep talking, keep thinking, don't freeze up, keep going _. 

"Not necessarily, I merely said that I have never seen the like." Spock slid down the next two meters in a crouching position, nearly losing his balance as he skidded in a half-turn. The needles started in earnest where he stopped. He swung the stone in his hand at the larger, dangerous ones.

Kirk skidded down next to him. 

"The ice seems real enough, natural or not," he said, seeing Spock wipe a smear of green blood off the heel of his hand. "Bad cut?"

"No."

"Want to go back?"

"That would be illogical. There is nothing to go back to."

"I'll go first from here on," Kirk offered.

"Unnecessary," Spock said, and set himself to make the last slide down to the basin of the room. He let go of the stalagmite supporting him and skied, breaking off little points with the toes of his boots. He came to a stop among ankle-high icicles without injury, and turned to watch Kirk.

Kirk, too, slid to a stop without injury. He stood up and looked around slowly. The bioluminescent glow here was faint, like starlight. It glistened off the spires of ice, giving the strange scene another dimension of unreality, punctuated by the faint but unflagging verses of alien music, and an uneasy feeling, _ Something's watching us _.

"How could anything so beautiful be so deadly?" Kirk muttered.

"The two concepts are frequently synonymous," Spock said. "Witness the delicate beauty of the Stygian cul-orchid, which lulls the unwary victim with its fragrance, then strangles and consumes it with its suckervines. On your world..."

"Yes, yes, Mr. Spock," Kirk shushed, but not without a wan smile. Spock's subtle reminder had made its point: this beautiful place was too dangerous to allow any part of his attention to linger on its other features. It was going to take every ounce of caution to get across this room alive.

"Let's get going," Kirk said grimly, and hefted the stone he held.

They made their way into the needles, Spock again in the lead, stepping between the columns as they went. The icicles were so profuse that there was barely place to put their feet. Wielding the stone like a bludgeon, Spock smashed the tips off of the larger columns while destroying the tiny points where he set his feet by kicking them down with his boot toe first wherever he could. Every step had to be a feat of precise engineering. A wrong placement, and a foot could be jammed in a crevice between the columns of ice, or worse, a foot might skid, and even the decapitated icicles were jagged.

Eight meters, ten, eleven... a winding, slow but steady progress through the ice-maiden. Kirk took the lead, concentrating fiercely, cutting a way through the hungry ice, which glistened, gleamed. There were flecks of blood, now, red and green, scrapes and tiny slashes where the ice bit despite all caution. There were so many spikes, countless needles, teeth that hungered, reaching up and around in all directions. It was nightmarish. Kirk ached to sit, to lie down, to scream, to weep, to laugh insanely, but he only kept on, lifting the heavier stone mechanically, to the rhythm of the persistent, lilting chant, learning at just which angles to attack which thicknesses of icicle-stalagmite to break off their greedy spines.

_ Oh, please, Brer Fox, don't throw me in the briar patch... _

He lifted the stone and smashed it down, lifted the stone and smashed it down... and down... and... 

Someone seized his arm, catching the stone as it snapped out of his arrested grasp. Kirk blinked, then shook his head, not realizing that he had begun to sag. Spock dropped the stones and pulled Kirk against him, holding him onto his feet.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/156119161@N07/40639064990/in/album-72157696837217924/)

"Captain," the familiar voice insisted. "Look at me. Look at me!"

Forcing his eyes up, Kirk stared blearily into the quiet face. The music rose, it drove itself through him. "Please," he heard himself say, "don't throw me in, don't-"

Spock shook him harshly, and Kirk groaned. His mind snapped back to reality, and he realized that Spock was supporting him. He floundered a moment, getting his feet under him... his feet numb and oddly warm. _ Must be bleeding _. His legs took his weight again, and he straightened carefully.

"Are you all right?" Spock asked.

Kirk took a shuddering breath and nodded. He glanced around and saw that they were, impossibly, almost two-thirds of the way across the deathtrap.

"Must have hyperventilated," he said. "It's like a nightmare in here, things keep pulling my mind out from under me."

"You must endeavor to control yourself, Captain, both physically and mentally. I run convinced that there is a force here which is making it difficult for us to function coherently. We must fight that mental entropy, or lose our lives." 

"What force do you mean?"

"Insufficient data for a logical estimate, but I have experienced a similar dissociation before, when Dr. McCoy and I stepped through the Atavachron into Sarpeidon's ice age. There may be a time displacement factor, or other temporal flux. It is vital that you and I be aware of a tendency to disorientation, and in your case, Captain, to a tendency to emotional depression."

"I think you're right," Kirk said. "I won't let it happen again."

"Permit me to take the lead," Spock offered. "And stay close behind me."

Chips of ice flew, and Kirk and Spock inched forward again. The frozen terraces at the exit of the icehall were invitingly close, and every precarious step forward was a precious victory. They were ascending, now, away from the low cup at the center of the room.

Then, Kirk slipped.

He gasped in surprise, and glanced dazedly up at his arm and the instant scarlet stream that dribbled from it. He could not feel the spike of ice that had caught it and anchored it above his head. He felt no pain at all, only a slow sliding downward and a terrible weariness, a sudden, irresistible desire to go to sleep. But Spock's face loomed, words tumbled from his mouth in a meaningless jumble with a taut tone of horror, and hands reached down, manipulating his so-far-away body. Then there _ was _ pain - grey, wrenching pain that made him scream and retch at the same time.

_ God, oh god, oh please don't throw me in there, don't leave me here to die, to die. _

He became aware of being warm. It was a slow, seeping comfort in his half-asleep nightmare. It was good to be warm, to be still instead of bouncing in a dim grey mold-world full of blurred grey sensations. Bad dream, that grey place, not like here in the warmth and light without the pain.

Kirk began to roll over, but a lash of agony whipped him and he came fully awake. He rolled back, trying to get his bearings. It _ was _ warm, and bright enough to see by. He squinted around until he spotted Spock, sitting up against a wall of the cave. Kirk took a deep breath and pushed himself up on one elbow. He noticed that the hem of his uniform shirt had been torn off and was wrapped around his own left forearm several times to make a clumsy, red-soaked bandage. But the bleeding had been stopped. There was fire along his left side. He touched at it, but his shirt had already dried to the long gashes. He could move his legs, and there was stinging life in his feet again. Altogether, he had escaped lightly.

"It's warm," he said aloud.

Spock opened his eyes, but did not stir.

"I am gratified that you are recovered, Captain," he said distantly.

"I never really quite passed out. I remember your carrying me."

"You were incapable of carrying yourself."

"I don't doubt it," Kirk said. "What happened to the ice?"

"It ended just outside of the chamber we crossed." 

Kirk managed to sit up and scan Spock. He knew before he looked that Spock was hurt; he knew that tone of tense control. He saw no significant injuries on Spock's upper body, but below, beginning at his knees and descending, the dull dried green had completely stiffened the Vulcan's trousers.

"You can't walk," Kirk said, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice.

"I fear not," Spock said.

_ Was it so necessary to get me out of there fast that you had to plow through the rest of the ice that way _? But all Kirk said was, "Thank you."

"Illogical," Spock said softly. "However, you are welcome."

Kirk shifted and glanced around the new passage. The breeze that wafted through here was almost hot. Spock's glowing lichens were bright as the heart of a nebula. There were no stalagmites or stalactites. In fact, the passage, while rough, was almost cylindrical, stretching into the distance on a straight and level line.

"What do you make of this place, Spock?"

"I do not believe that it is naturally formed. You will note that the wind here flows spirally down the passage. I believe that we are in what is functioning as a 'vortex tube.' Are you familiar with the phenomenon?"

"Not really."

"In simple terms, a vortex tube is one in which air is being forced from a source along the middle of the tube. The air enters tangentially. If the tube's inner diameters reduce from the largest diameter at one end to the smallest at the other end, the molecules of air spiraling toward the wider end become heated; and those which are forced toward the narrow end become cooled, even though the temperature of the original air molecules entering the tube is of a normal 'room' temperature."

"That means that since the air where we came from before was cold, and the air here is warm, we must have passed the entrance to the vortex - and that has to be our way out of here." 

"Correct, Captain, though we have no data on the purpose of the tube. However," the Vulcan said, almost with a sigh, "you shall have to proceed on your own. I am quite unable to travel any significant distance."

"We'll see," Kirk said, pulling his knees up and feeling out his own feet. They weren't too badly abused. He made it up onto them, and after several long breaths, found that he could walk as long as he ignored the pain. He stumbled over to Spock.

"Let's find the gate and get the hell out of here," he said, hauling at Spock's arm. Together, they leaned on the wall to gather strength.

"If you insist on taking me with you, your own chances of escaping will be vastly diminished," Spock warned.

"So be it," Kirk said and helped Spock take a faltering step, then another. But they were moving, staggering down the passage into the heated wind. The air became cooler at every step, and they had gone less than twenty meters when they found the passage through which the spiraling breeze streamed.

The tunnel was low and narrow - hands and knees territory again. 

"We'll have to crawl. Can you?" he asked the Vulcan. 

"Yes."

"I'll go first. If you need to rest, we'll rest. If you wear out, I'll try to turn around somewhere and pull you through, all right?"

"Yes."

They lumbered through the tight tunnel, head-on in the stiff wind. Kirk found that his energy seeped out of him at an alarming rate. His injured arm would barely support him, and it forced him into an exhausting, lopsided gait. But he could hear Spock close behind him, and if Spock could keep it up, hurt like he was, Kirk was not about to give out. He pushed himself doggedly, through what seemed like an endless, murky sewer through which he must swim upstream.

Clusters of gathering black specks were crowding his vision, and his lungs were wheezing like moldy leather bellows when he finally came to a little pocket in the endless burrow, where it was wide enough for two bodies. There was nothing he could do but collapse on the cool, dry stone. Behind him, he heard Spock stop, too. Spock didn't even crawl into the pocket. He laid down in the tight passage and didn't move. And Kirk realized, then, that neither one of them was going to make it out of the cave.

After a century, Kirk managed to turn enough to look back at his First Officer. All he could see was the dimly highlighted whorl of dark hair.

"Spock?" Kirk rasped.

No answer.

_ We're going to die here. It's wrung us dry. We've had it. _

But he dragged himself around, noticing the dark smear under his arm as he shifted. There was no pain, at least. Prostration had dulled his nerves. It was only a few meters back to Spock. It was a light-year's journey in a sub-light vessel. Kirk clawed his way along the stone, wanting nothing but to lie still, to sleep, but needing to reach Spock first.

He inched forward [_ backward _?] until his fingers brushed soft warmth.

_ What a stinking place to die. Ready-made grave. _

_ And there's that goddamned music again _.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/156119161@N07/41723953264/in/album-72157696837217924/)  


"Go away," he breathed, closing his eyes. He laid his head next to Spock, and slid an arm up in a half-embrace.

"_ Jim _," someone said.

"Jim!" 

His name, shouted in his ear, jerked him out of the drifting lull. He twisted weakly to see Spock's face, but the Vulcan was staring up at the ceiling of the passage with naked astonishment. Kirk looked up.

The near-smooth curve of stone was wrinkling as they watched, tiny white tendrils creeping across it from pinpoint nuclei. The tendrils intertwined in a gauzy macramé, cloaking the brown stone, then suddenly budded into little hanging polyps. Their growth was impossibly quick, like watching the lifecycle of an Aldebaran shellmouth, which could live ninety years standard, compressed on speeded-up logtape into a few seconds.

"Is it going to eat us?" Kirk whispered.

The polyps grew to the size of pears, blushed a vivid canary, and burst suddenly. A clear sap oozed from them, and Kirk dragged his arm up to cover his face, but Spock was up on an elbow, one trembling hand reaching to catch the liquid.

"What is it?" Kirk managed.

"It is LIFE," Spock said. "Look."

The sap was running across Spock's hand, seeping into the ragged gash on the heel of his palm. Before Kirk's eyes, the curls of flesh along each side of the wound crawled toward each other. They did not seal perfectly, and a line of bright scar tissue formed along the seam, but for most purposes, the wound was healed.

Kirk gaped, then dropped his hand back, smiling with weary thanksgiving. Relieved triumph bubbled up in him, and he would have laughed if he had had the energy. He reached up, too, and cupped his hand under the dripping polyps. He squeezed past Spock's shoulders and yanked up Spock's trouser leg, inadvertently tearing open the scabbed gouges. But it hardly mattered. Once the sap was smoothed into the wounds, they too responded to the miracle. And the sap kept dripping on them, soothing them in a healing rain. It even tasted good. Kirk's empty stomach made him bold. He ate some of the sap, and it glowed inside of him.

After a time, both men crawled into the pocket which Kirk had left earlier. Spock sat up with evident relief. Kirk couldn't help grinning at him with a smile that wouldn't wipe off.

"I can hardly believe it," Kirk said. "We've died and gone to heaven."

"Not exactly," Spock said, his eyes smiling. "But I am now thoroughly convinced that there is a sentience here which is not deliberately hostile to us, and which may, indeed, have only become aware of our distress."

"That makes sense, all right. I've had the feeling for some time that we're being watched. What were those plants, by the way? You _ knew _ they had a healing effect."

"Indeed, I did. I recognized them immediately. They are a fungal lifeform found only on Neural, the planet inhabited by your Kanutu acquaintances. It is, in fact, botanically related to the Mako root which Dr. McCoy studied during our first visitation-there. The doctor conducted extensive experiments on the polyps, _ exo-ascomycetes neurali 247 _, on our second visitation. According to McCoy's report, a derivative of the polyps' sap is a natural tissue revitalizer of great potency. Unfortunately, the genus is quite rare, even on Neural, making the derivative practically unobtainable."

"But the polyps are here!"

"The polyps are here. I do not believe that they occur here naturally. Captain, I have hesitated to express my suspicions earlier for lack of concrete evidence, but the possibility exists that Dr. McCoy is alive. I believe that he has been attempting, through the music we have been hearing, to communicate with us."

Some tight, sad-bitter tension that Kirk had been trying to ignore in the pit of his stomach loosened, then melted under the surge of hope. He nodded slightly.

"But if it's Bones, he's not alone. There's something else here."

"Obviously, as Dr. McCoy has neither the knowledge nor the skill to transmute matter or energy as with the polyps or the music."

"Whatever it is," Kirk said, "I don't think we're going to find either it or Bones here. If it made this place, it must be trying to lead us to itself. Do you feel well enough to travel again?"

"I believe so. Do you?" 

"I feel like a new man."

"You are, in the sense that a considerable proportion of your cells have been regenerated in the past hour."

Kirk only shook his head in relief, and crawled into the tunnel again.

Traveling was easy after that. The passage soon broadened so that they could walk upright, and it took a steeper incline. Sometimes it spiraled, like the stairs of an ancient lighthouse, round and round on a ramp. The higher they climbed, the fresher the air became. Then the tunnel leveled out, and from the far end, there was a bright light. And at that point, the air became filled with a mild, tickling vibration. It sang in the air, growing stronger as they advanced, though it seemed completely harmless.

The end of the passage finished in a gentle curve and opened into an expansive chamber, which was flooded by an oblique shaft of sunlight that poured in through an opening in the high ceiling and reflected in fluttering patterns around the stone walls from the still pool beneath it. The vibrations in the chamber were much stronger, making Kirk's teeth buzz and his hair stand on end.

_ It is here _. He couldn't see it, but he knew it was there. And then he saw McCoy.

The doctor sat utterly still on a smooth boulder at the edge of the pond, his hands folded neatly on his lap, his eyes closed and his face serene. He looked asleep - or dead. Kirk and Spock circled him silently, Spock gestured that they should not attempt to touch him. The silent vibration was so forceful around McCoy that Kirk half expected there to be crackles of static charge off McCoy's skin, though there were none.

"Bones?" Kirk whispered. "Bones, we came."

A flicker of a smile traced the serene lips, but that was the only response.

"Spock, what's wrong with him?" 

"He is in a trance," Spock said, his voice unsteady. "He is in communion with the Presence."

"You feel it?"

"It is most powerful. Its emanations are disrupting the neurotransmission chemistry of my brain, as though it were attempting to link with my psionic awareness. I can, however, maintain control..."

"How can we get it to let McCoy go?"

"Perhaps a mind link with the doctor..."

But Kirk stepped back and pulled Spock with him, both watching raptly. Something was happening to McCoy.

The doctor's flesh rippled across his skeleton as though it were about to melt off of him, and then the skin folded back and rolled inward, turning him literally inside out. It was as though he were being swallowed inwardly on himself, skin folding back and under, rolling out red muscle and tiny capillaries, bending, flowing, revealing organs, fascia, connective tissue of every type, veils of translucence over the viscera liken dragonfly's wing, webbed with vascular tributaries, glistening, rippling, the mystery of the organism revealed... and then the brain itself, grey and white and pulsing red-blue, opening and unfolding in layers like an onion being peeled... no, like a lotus; opening its petals... delicate, beautiful beyond description, the seat of sentience in humankind. And then, almost too quickly to follow, all flowed back as it had been, muscle draping over viscera, skull sealing over dura mater, skin rolling outward to drape the creature in its familiar form, and it was McCoy again, still serene, still entranced.

It took Kirk a full minute to find his voice, and then, he couldn't do more than whisper.

"I think," he said, awed, "that we've just witnessed a lecture on human anatomy."

"Fascinating," Spock agreed. "And most... startling."

"After that, do you still want to try to initiate a meld with him?"

"Despite Dr. McCoy's somewhat unorthodox teaching style, I would prefer to attempt to communicate with the being through him, rather than allowing it to link with me directly. Its energy levels have considerable potency, and the doctor's psi-null nature, even in the grasp of a meld with the being, may function as a partial buffer, allowing me to retain some sense of individuality, and thus control, within the link."

"All right," Kirk acceded, "but I'll be right next to you to pull you out if something doesn't look right to me."

Spock closed his eyes and drew his tightly joined hands to his chin, obviously having trouble concentrating his psychic awareness in the distracting vibrations. They seemed to play across one's skin like static waves, tickling, teasing, occasionally stinging a bit. But after several minutes, the Vulcan unfolded his hands and flexed them in the precise pattern for a psionic link.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/156119161@N07/40639064750/in/album-72157696837217924/)

"We are coming closer, Doctor," the voice droned. "We are coming closer. Closer. Permit me. To join. With you. The One Who Is... Join... Permit my thoughts... McCoy... Doctor... it is I ... Let me in..."

The fingers quivered, suddenly, and Spock gasped, falling against McCoy in an almost-embrace, as though something had yanked him in.

There was none of the soft, mumbled talkativeness that usually characterized Spock's mindlinks. Instead, there was that vague smile on McCoy's face again, which reflected on Spock's stern features, mellowing them. Afraid to interfere, Kirk crouched beside them in the awesome silence, and waited. And watched.

It seemed an eternity before Spock stirred, and when Kirk looked into the Vulcan's unfocussed eyes, there was such a tender, open smile there that Kirk reached out in alarm to pull Spock away and out of it, sure that something was very wrong But Spock ensnared Kirk's hand and immobilized it.

"Spock," Kirk cried, "come out of it!"

"Jim," the Vulcan crooned, "come _ into _ it."

With irresistible Vulcan strength, Spock dragged Kirk's fingers to his own temples, and a piercing warmth flooded Kirk's consciousness.

_ No! Don't do this, please, don't throw me in, don't throw me in the briar... _

_ Swirls of warm, sweet wind-water-time swept and tossed him in its crests, a journey, a quest. It was not a true journey, he/they knew, for their bodies were heavy sculptures hanging sleepily on the fringes of perception, breathing, pumping precious fluids, maintaining physical life. But awareness was a journey, for that was a concept they all shared, even the Being. _

_ The Being covered them, contained them, beside, around, within, with. Concepts/perceptions denied logical synthesis. To attempt to encompass the alienness of It would be a sure gate to madness. They could not perceive what their senses/reason would deny, or worse, refuse to recognize. _

_ Yet what they sensed was strange enough, though interpreted of necessity in familiar frameworks. For before/within them fanned a Child, a babe, humanoid but not Human, neither Vulcan, an image of corporeal innocence born out of their shared consciousness. It opened eyes of fathomless depth, black as space, and as infinite. It settled its gaze on him/them looking neither up nor down on them, but at that odd, near-butstretched-far-away, out-of-kilter parallax that comes to humanoids sometimes just at the edge of sleep. _

_ From out of the eyes came a sense of ravenous hunger, pitiful, demanding - anxious, primitive need; and one part of him/them pleaded to help, to help the Child, for the one part had already given all that it had to give, and still the infant hungered. _

_ Show me show me feed me show me _

_ And he/they showed it all they had to show, all that it hungered to know; moons and junes and christmas bells and marriage bells and death toll bells and ship's alarms and empty arms and dreams and hopes and rights and wrongs. Amber seas of Telza II; blue-green ocean-heart of Vulcan, bright with salts of copper; grey-blue salt sea of Earth, feel of sand, taste of brine; formulas and life cycles and ecosystems intertwined; and more, and all, things that he/they could find and unlock from the brimming storehouses of their minds. _

_ And something in him/them knew: the drain on us, before, was this great thirst. _

_ They fed it faster, then, waterspout-whirlpools of data and ideas, drawn out of them like some unwinding spool of duotronic memory, library computers to be scanned and copied, great and tireless draughts of knowledge served to sate a desperate hunger long neglected. _

_ Timesense had lost all reference, and all that had been in his/their accessible experiences seemed to exist together in the Now, much as things are in dreams, where yesterday blends comfortably with today, and sometimes even oversteps into tomorrow. The sense of spinning gathered more momentum, draining more energy, spun and stunned the efforts of their mind(s) to maintain balance and coherency. And out of that gathering chaos, journey maddening as crossing the reef around the galaxy, images escaped in wild profusion, and one clung with tenacious, half comprehensible clarity: _

_ An aged Being; no more a Child, arriving at the dimming shore of a long life, gathers its accumulated strength and wisdom for this one, final, most mightily important Leap - beyond its Self and the confines of physical energy/matter, to slice gently through the folds of space and time, to place its Touch, and thus its Seed, on this one chosen place in this one chosen universe, where timelines gather favorably and physical conditions are appropriate. _

_ Journey, journey, that this Child knew well, and touched, and took bud, inhabiting/becoming this point in timespace, as it must, to learn and grow. _

_ Joy/tears/confusion, hunger ruling, show me teach me help me grow _

_ Confusion/tears/joy, yes, oh yes, oh see what we all have to show you _

_ (please) help me (please?) - (You teach me thus) - to grow as I must grow... _

* * *

"An oracle?" Kirk breathed, shaking his head incredulously. He glanced around at the reassuring normality around him; outside world filled with dazzling sun and green growing things, and human forms in red and gold and blue. It was over. They were outside and safe, and the Kongo had joined the Enterprise to escort her to starbase, so there was no hurry anymore, none at all. Behind the men, other members of Scotty's search teams were preparing to begin beam-ups. But Kirk, Spock, and McCoy sat in the moss by the rim of the great gorge, absorbed in conversation. Kirk ignored the bustle behind him and squinted in the brilliance of Demphios' noon, trying to focus his cave dimmed eyes on Spock. "Do you mean an oracle like the one the ancient Greeks consulted at Delphi?"

"Very likely," Spock replied thoughtfully, "though the oracle we have encountered here is in its infancy, and the oracle at Delphi must have been an extremely aged member of its species. It no longer had the capacity to transmute matter and energy, as the infant has, nor could the Delphi oracle travel the potential timelines with much efficiency - resulting in its fabled ambiguous or incomplete predictions of probability."

"Do you mean that the Being here can predict the future?" McCoy said. He forced himself to sit up straighter, his skin still ashen from the strain of his lengthy contact.

"Negative, Doctor. The infant oracle apparently does not yet possess the capability of scanning the timelines of the future, although it seems to draw its energies from the fluxes of time-currents, much like a water wheel is driven by the force of a river."

"It gave me a strong impression of hunger," Kirk offered. "It drew us to it, it wanted something from us." 

"Indeed, so it would seem. I could not gather much useful information about the Oracle's nature while in the grip of its vastly alien mind, but I believe that all of its infant perceptions were directed toward assimilating information from us. It seemed to have a voracious appetite for knowledge. A most unique sustenance."

"That's it!" McCoy said. "It drew me into the canyon because it wanted knowledge, and it picked up my thoughts about music and recognized music as a product of intelligence."

"It has been said that music, like mathematics, is a truly universal language."

"Right. I remember standing on the rim of the canyon, and I remember thinking how beautiful the place was, like a little Grand Canyon. I started hummin' a part of the Grand Canyon Suite, then, and all of a sudden I couldn't stop humming. I couldn't think of anything but music, and I got this crazy compulsion to go down to the bottom of the canyon. And the music pulled me right into the river and through the caves. I couldn't think of anything else."

"How in God's name did you get through the ice by yourself?" Kirk said.

McCoy frowned and shook his head.

"It wasn't there when I went through, Jim."

"Which confirms my hypothesis," Spock added. He steepled his fingers and stared out across the rim of the gorge, his face composed but his eyes alive with wonder. "I believe that the difficulties that you and I encountered in the caverns, Captain, were manufactured by the oracle. Recall that we knew, even as we traversed it, that the ice chamber was not a natural phenomenon. The oracle constructed it out of images it perceived from its link with Dr. McCoy's mind, including his subconscious 'nightmares.'"

"I do have a nightmare, sometimes, of an ice cave. It's full of icicles, top to bottom. But why would the oracle reconstruct one of my nightmares?"

"Possibly, the oracle does not distinguish between imagery of the subconscious mind and that of the conscious mind," Spock said. "Alternately, it constructed the chamber in order to examine it more minutely once it completed its scan of your mind, Doctor."

"It manufactured the music from Bones' mind, too," Kirk added.

"Undoubtedly. I am curious, however, about the fabrication of the healing fungus which enabled us to recover from our injuries. Doctor, while you were in link with the Being, were you aware of the Captain's and my presence?"

"My memories are pretty confused, but yes, I think I was; I recall trying to tell somebody something, tell somebody to be careful, to hurry. Don't ask me just what I was doin', communicatin' through music and all, it was hard enough just to keep a coherent thought to myself without tryin' to figure out just what I wanted to tell you. I do remember about the fungus, though. The Being sensed that you were hurt - I could feel that pretty clearly - and I wanted to help you. It sort of 'asked' me how, and all I could think of was a fungus I studied on Neural."

"That fungus was recreated by the oracle in exact chemical detail," Spock said.

"Incredible," Kirk said reverently. "It could transmute matter and energy completely without apparatus. And it hungers for knowledge like a babe for milk."

"But it let us go, Jim," McCoy said. "It must have gotten something useful out of us. A sense of ethics, maybe?"

"I am certain that it obtained a great deal more than that," Spock said. "I was assisted to recall every scientific fact or theorem that I have encountered in the totality of my life. The oracle's thirst for knowledge relating to physics and the nature of time seemed to be particularly urgent. I believe that in order to enable it to develop the ability at maturity to scan timelines and to 'seed' an offspring across universes, an oracle must have an essentially perfect conception of the laws and anomalies by which our universe - and others exist."

"What a find!" McCoy laughed.

"Possibly, Doctor. The oracle is an infant. If the Federation would wish to devote resources to developing diplomatic relations with the Being to mutual benefit, it should not expect the oracle to be capable of functioning to the Federation's advantage for, in all likelihood, two million years."

"Two million years?"

"But," Kirk said softly, "we've given it a good start. We were, I think, its first teachers."

McCoy shook his head in bewilderment and climbed to his feet, helped by Kirk and followed by Spock. The sun was swinging away from its zenith, bending towards afternoon, and most of the others had already beamed up. The transporter room was standing by, and a long, healing sleep awaited them, doctor's orders.

"Oh well," McCoy sighed, staring into the gorge. Then he smiled. "At least we gave it a civilized appreciation for fine Terran music, which is more than I can say for some Vulcans I know."

"To the contrary, Doctor-"

Kirk laughed heartily, finding the energy to clap the both of them on the back hard enough to deflate them.

"Later, you two," he said. "The Kongo's standing by, and Scotty's anxious to get 'his' ship to starbase. Gentlemen, let's go home. I'd say we gave our child a good start. I think I like the idea of being godfather to an oracle - we're starting to collect quite a family."

McCoy shot a wicked grin at Spock. 

"Da-da," he teased.

The transporter beam put a stop to that.


End file.
